I know a sneaky person who’s been putting the “Jamie Lynn Spears Pregnant” tag on all of their videos in an interesting attempt to draw traffic… Is it working?
Filed under: Media, new media | Tags: crap, love doctor, overlay ads, trace adkins
I just saw an article supports two things I agree with:
1) Overlay ads – the new, pop-up esque media that talks to you when you don’t ask it to- is obnoxious.
2) Trace Adkins, the man who brought us the gem”Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” should not be allowed to make any more music.
Check it out here at AdRants, it’s a short post.
Trace Adkins aka ‘The Love Doctor’ (WTF?) Hypes Album With Overlay Ad
Don’t you just love online ads that appear out of nowhere, blocking the content you are trying to read and distracting you with sound? Of course you do which is why you’ll love this Innovate Ads overlay ad appearing on 25 radio station websites featuring Trace Adkins hyping his new album and single, Love Doctor. Could the dude droll on the country shtick any thicker? I guess you just might also have to love country to love this ad.
What do you guys think of overlay ads? We’ve been talking a lot lately about new Internet/ Interactive media and this is sort of new. It has evolved a lot since it first came on the scene however I find it annoying. Though, if the client agrees to try it out most of the ads are pretty creative. I see pros and cons. You?
I read this article on Adweek.com this morning. It’s a really long article, it’s full of boring information, but important information. I read it, it took forever, but the information you can learn is worth it. Get a cup of coffee, a scone and have a seat. I said read it. I did.
Going Up: Elevator Media Gains Momentum
December 10, 2007
By Joan Voight
Captivate Networks, a subsidiary of Gannett, has installed branded screens in 8,400 elevators in 860 office buildings nationwide.
SAN FRANCISCO You just got to the office on a Wednesday morning and are heading to a meeting to discuss an upcoming trip to see a client in California. On your way up the elevator to the 10th floor, a screen shows you a weather forecast including the West Coast, where you are headed, it tells you the stock report for the company you are courting and gives you a new vocabulary word to try out in the meeting. At the same time it also tells you about car rental deals from Avis, new booking services from Orbitz and makes a pitch for Charles Schwab’s Web site.
Captivate Networks, a subsidiary of Gannett, has installed branded screens in 8,400 elevators in 860 office buildings nationwide, and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday runs text-based news and features on half the screen and silent video ads on the other half. The company claims to reach 2.5 million viewers per day.
The elevator network is part of the burgeoning alternative out-of-home marketing industry, which is comprised of video advertising networks and screens in movie theaters, stores, offices and public transit. Ad spending on alternative out-of-home outlets grew 27 percent to $1.69 billion in 2006 and is expected to grow another 28 percent in 2007, according to the Alternative Out-of-Home Media Forecast 2007-2011 by PQ Media.
In comparison, total out-of home spending increased only 11 percent in 2006 and overall ad expenditures grew a measly 6.4 percent, according to the report. Alternative out-of-home represents 24 percent of all total out-of-home ad spending, per the forecast, released in May. Captivate’s income from advertisers, including Microsoft, FedEx, McDonald’s, Budweiser and Nike, will be at least 30 percent higher in 2007 compared to last year, says Mike DiFranza, founder of Captivate.
With ads in bathroom stalls, taxi cabs and at the gas pump, it seems like there is no place that is free from marketing. The trick for marketers is to be interesting without being intrusive. Ten-year-old Capitvate’s strategy is to understand consumers’ mind-set when they are using the space and try to match their desire for information and entertainment with the setting. Ad messages are treated as an integral part of that information-sharing service. Unlike other public spaces, however, elevators appear to be places where trapped consumers are looking for distractions, says Captivate, compared to other settings such as gas pumps or taxi cabs.
“The elevator ride is usually an awkward period for people when they are placed with people they have nothing in common. The video screen is a natural distraction for them at a time when they are looking for distractions,” says DiFranza.
The format of the elevator network is based on studying customers in the compact space and giving them small bites of relevant content that comes from authoritative sources. Captivate provides information such as weather forecasts, stock updates and news bulletins as static text, similar to a Web site. The ads, in contrast, look like TV ads with the sound turned off.
“Advertisers don’t have lots of opportunities to reach consumers right at the point where they are using our product,” says Tom Russell, vp, brand marketing at Orbitz Worldwide, a Captivate advertiser. Travel booking happens at work, Russell says, “and if it is snowing outside and I can show them a picture of a beach with a $200-off online coupon for travel on our site, well, then that will get their attention.”
Captivate’s research showed that it is more compelling to have content next to the advertising, so the network never devotes the whole screen to advertising, but always splits it 50-50 with non-ad content. The content is offered in 15-second bites because most elevator rides last at least that long and riders say they feel “unfulfilled” to only see a part of a longer segment during their ride, says a Captivate rep.
Research suggests that the audience is indeed receptive.
Based on Captivate’s online polls and in-person surveys, conducted in conjunction with Millward Brown, outside the elevators, about 97 percent of elevator riders have watched the screens and 85 percent watch them during every trip. (The 15-20-minute in-person surveys involve up to 40 questions, including demographic queries.)
Based on such viewer feedback, the network is expanding into advertiser-sponsored social networking polls and programming, such as asking viewers to send in their favorite vacation photos for use in travel segments and e-mail answers to questions such as, “Who is the one person you’d most like to be stuck in an elevator with?”
Research shows the most popular programming is general news, weather, business news and a vocabulary feature called “word of the day.” Men also like sports and stock market information, while women also like entertainment and lifestyle content.
Research further revealed that viewers prefer the content come from a variety of established media rather than a single source, such as sister company USA Today. As a result, the elevator content is sourced as coming from CNN, NBC, Wired magazine, Salon.com, the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets, in addition to USA Today.
Orbitz, an online travel service, is one of the advertisers trying to take advantage of the fact that high-rise office workers usually walk from the elevator to the computer at their desk. “Our goal is to drive viewers to our site for travel booking and updated flight information, says Russell.
The Orbitz elevator campaign is a version of its TV campaign, and is meant to fit seamlessly among its existing broadcast, print, radio, airport and online ads. Russell says consideration of the brand has moved up among the demo targeted by the elevator ads since they began two years ago, but it is difficult to say how the work has contributed to sales. The benefits are that elevator ads reach just about every rider, and the mix of travel- and weather-related content on screen at the same time as the ads prompts people to view the screen longer than if the program were ads only, he says.
But is the lack of sound a hardship? “Not really,” says Russell. “To replace our audio cues, we use dynamic visuals, such as the motion of the brand’s signature orbiting halo,” he says.
Orbitz is also experimenting with creative work that is designed for the setting, such as frames going up and down, similar to the elevator going floor to floor, and doors opening and closing on the scenes in the ads, similar to the elevator door opening and closing.
PQ Media’s research says the majority of consumers view alternative out-of-home media as “favorable and educational,” thanks to digital technology and creative positioning. Unlike its mass media peers, elevator ads and other alternative out-of-home media are “impervious to channel or Web surfing and are immune to audience fragmentation,” says Patrick Quinn, CEO of PQ Media. “Ironically, the trends impeding traditional media—consumer fragmentation and control, advertising accountability and the emergence of digital technology—are the very catalysts stimulating the growth in alternative out-of-home advertising.”
This is a new take on the green initiative. I can see some people always using this site to make purchase decisions. It makes for an interesting demographic, and a new/revised category of psychographics (the green group). This initiative grows every day, even MSN has added a green section, just like their sports or entertainment sections.
Evo Connects Green Businesses with Jaded Buyers
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Kermit is right. It’s not easy being green. For spiritual Kermits, Evo has arrived — to help green-leaning consumers make shopping decisions by making eco-friendly alternatives easily accessible. The site covers everything from food and clothes, to housewares and solar panels. The site’s business model depends primarily on affiliate revenue: it only gets paid when it makes a connection between buyer and seller, CEO Dan Siegel told TreeHugger. Evo partners with countless small and medium green sellers, amounting to over 2 million products and services on the site. Every product includes a green evaluation based on a painstaking rating system that takes into account what the item is made from, how it is produced, the distance it traveled to reach the consumer, and what type of energy powers it, reports PSFK. The site is also supported by user reviews. With these efforts in place, consumers won’t be tricked into products that only claim to be green, a tactic Siegel refers to as “greenwashing.” |
This is a great look into the future of the Internet and the technology. Very interesting!
Tell me the future
We asked the godfather of the net to tell us where the technology will take us. He emailed his address book
- The Guardian
- Monday December 3 2007
When we asked Vint Cerf, chief evangelist at Google, to guest edit MediaGuardian, we expected him to bring us some luminaries of the web who we don’t often get to hear from. His choices transform an often-asked question (“what’s the future?”), into an insight into the thinking of innovators and pioneers. It’s no coincidence that three of them are founders of some of the biggest web names.
Their specialist fields (from search, to advertising, video streaming to social networking) represent what Cerf believes to be the most exciting areas of development on the web and in the world; notably Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan, who have pioneered the internet infrastructure in Africa.
Finally, each one has had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the future of media.
Social networking
Chris De Wolfe
CEO, co-founder MySpace
In only a few years, social networks have become a staple in the internet landscape as the social networking phenomenon allowed people to “put their lives online”. A person’s profile became a representation of who they really were in the offline world, and allowed them to transfer their offline world online.
More than ever, social networks are blurring online and offline worlds, evolving into social destinations that are driving the direction of the larger web and affecting industries like advertising, music and politics.
Predicting the future of social networks exclusively misses the larger point – these evolving online social destinations are laying the groundwork for the new social web which we believe is becoming infinitely more personal, more portable, and more collaborative.
First, as we expand these social destinations to all corners of the world, we must always think in terms of the individual. With millions of people using social websites, there’s an increasing demand to make everyone’s web experience personal. In the same way a home or office is your physical address, we expect your personal, online social profile to become your internet address. When I give out www.myspace.com/chrisdewolfe to friends and colleagues, everyone knows where to find me online.
We expect aspects of all socially-based sites to become increasingly portable. In terms of mobile, we expect to have relationships with every carrier and device-maker in the world and we expect that half of our future traffic will come from non-PC users.
Social activity is happening everywhere and we expect applications and features to be more fluid, based on the online population that want content where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it. Social activity should be portable and we expect the industry will continue to move in that direction.
Lastly, online social destinations work best when creativity and development are collaborative concepts. From personal profiles, to the widget economy, to the OpenSocial standard – the future of the social web will harness the savvy of the masses to produce more relevant and meaningful social experiences, ultimately pushing the larger industry to be more innovative and progressive.
Lowering the barrier to entry for a new generation of developers will lead to a more collaborative and dynamic web and directly affect the tools and feature sets available on socially-based sites. Supporting a more collaborative web creates a more global and participatory internet experience for everyone.
The evolution of social networks is kick-starting a broad global shift for how people, content and culture collide on the web. Right now we’re looking at the tip of the iceberg for what the social web will look like in the future. Fundamentally, all social destinations must expand while staying personal, they must engage users while empowering portability, and they must work with up and coming innovators and major web leaders to both collaborate and contribute to the larger web community.
Video
Chad Hurley
CEO, co-founder YouTube
In five years, video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. People will have the opportunity to record and share video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world.
Today, eight hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This will grow exponentially over the next five years. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen – in your living room or in your pocket – and will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and more.
In the next five years, users will be at the centre of their video experience, you will have more access to more information, and the world will be a smaller place.
Advertising
Maurice Lévy
Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe
Five years is an eternity in technology, but from our vantage point a few things are clear about what the internet and internet advertising will look like in 2012. One, virtually all media will be digital, and digital will enable almost all kinds of advertising. Two, online advertising will depend more than ever on the one element which has always been at the heart of impactful advertising, both analogue and digital: creativity. The explosion of media channels means this is a glorious time to think and act creatively. In art history terms, we are at the dawn of the Renaissance after the Dark Ages.
Just as the Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred and profane art forms and between individual and community, so we are seeing a similar exciting blurring today – and this will only intensify. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, where you can move seamlessly in and out of different settings. Prescribed time – the 7 o’clock news, the Friday night out at the cinema, etc – is now becoming multitasking time. People are no longer willing to put up with interruptions for a commercial break during their entertainment experience, and so we have to find incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage them in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale will be critical: in five years’ time, around 2 billion people will be constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!
Mobile
Biz Stone
Co-founder, Twitter
As we increasingly realise the web as a vital social utility and important marketplace we cannot ignore an even bigger potential. The power of the internet is not limited to the PC. Twitter has emerged to create a seamless layer of social connectivity across SMS, IM, and the web. Operating on the simple concept of status, Twitter asks one question: “What are you doing?” Friends, family and colleagues stay connected through short responses.
The potential for this simple form of hybrid communication technology is strong. For example, a person in India may text “Follow Biz” and get online via Twitter over SMS in a matter of seconds. Biz might be updating from the US on a PC. Nevertheless, the updates are exchanged instantly.
Our future holds in store the promise of increased connectivity to a powerful social internet which truly extends to every little spot on our Planet Earth. We’re all affected by and defined by each other’s actions. What are you doing?
Search
Peter Norvig
Director of research, Google
Yale librarian Rutherford Rogers said “We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.” The internet is an ocean of information and in the near future we’ll speed through it effortlessly and intuitively, like a tuna. No, I don’t mean you’ll have fins.
If you haven’t been searching for [tuna tail vortices] recently, you may not know that a tuna’s body creates small vortices in the water that are then channelled by the tuna’s tail to create additional power.
This symbiosis of tuna and watery environment forms a more efficient propulsion system than anything designed by human engineers.
In the future, a similar symbiosis of searcher and computational environment will allow us to move faster through the internet than we would have thought possible. We will not just be typing in keywords and getting back a list of 10 web pages.
Instead, our interaction will be more fluid, our computers will accept our requests in many forms, and will scan our environment proactively, looking for ways to provide us with additional power. We will get back web pages, yes, along with existing books and videos, but also custom tables, charts, animations, databases, and summarisations created on-the-fly in response to our specific needs.
Today, nobody says “I need to connect to a megawatt power station” – instead we assume that electricity will be available on demand in almost every room of every building we visit. Edison could see that this would be useful, but could not foresee the range of appliances, from food processors to mp3 players, that this availability would enable. So too will information flow freely to us in the future, and be transformed by as-yet-unforeseen information appliances.
Archive
Bruce Cole
Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities (US)
At the National Endowment for the Humanities, we believe the internet and other information-age tools, such as digital archiving, will help us understand the world more deeply, broadly, and creatively. For humanists just as much for scientists, the ability to mine, analyse, and understand data, simulate complex environments, and combine information from a wide variety of sources, is critical to 21st-century discovery and innovation.
The exciting new tools of the digital age also present unique challenges. With digital technologies, we can comb through information in seconds versus years, and assimilate knowledge from a much broader array of sources for new insights. But the wellbeing of the infrastructure itself demands new time-frames. Information in books can be preserved for centuries before transfer to new “media” is needed. Information on disks, thumb drives, and other digital media has a lifespan measured in years or even months rather than centuries before transfer to the next generation of media is required.
Just as physical infrastructure is a foundation for modern life, digital infrastructure (data storage, computers, networks, etc.) is foundational infrastructure for the information age. Attention to the health and support of this infrastructure is critical to ensuring that born-digital knowledge is preserved and passed on for the benefit of future generations.
Developing world
Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan
Research associate, University of Oregon Network Startup Resource Center; CEO, Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for Africa
The first full internet connection to the African continent was established in Tunisia in October 1991. Over the next 15 years, the transition from store-and-forward email networks to full internet connectivity in capital cities all over Africa progressed steadily, with Eritrea being the last to join the global internet in November 2000.
While most of the continent’s internet connections are via satellite today, the transition to fibre over the next five years will take off as one or more of the undersea cables currently competing to service eastern and southern Africa become operational. However, penetration to rural communities will continue to be limited due to the lack of infrastructure, and the cost of a personal computer is typically more than what the average person in a village can afford.
Consumer broadband services via DSL are becoming available in an increasing number of countries; however, service costs depend greatly on the pervasiveness and reliability of local infrastructure. Wireless solutions will continue to evolve as the dominant service for “last kilometre” access due to the lack of local infrastructure. Given that national scale fibre build-outs are not a major focus of the five-year budget plans for most governments, most service providers will continue to deploy a combination of wireless and leased line infrastructure from telecommunications companies for providing internet access. Overall progress will occur, but realistically, the limited or unavailable national infrastructure (power and fibre) will make it difficult to attain economies of scale, which will limit pan-African internet development between now and 2012.
The explosion in mobile telephony that has turned Africa into the fastest-growing market in the world, at more than twice the international average growth in subscriber numbers, will continue to drive locally-fuelled innovations. A number of SMS and voice-enabled applications are already in use in numerous African markets, providing financial, agricultural, health, and other information services. Network services via mobile devices will accelerate as mobile operators upgrade infrastructure, and cheaper and more sophisticated handsets lower the bar for innovation.
The rise of a youthful, entrepreneurial and well-educated vanguard of Africans will lead this overhaul of the continent’s communications services. Countries that are embracing information technology today and harnessing the power of wireless networks, mobile telephony and low-cost technology for the end-user, along with establishing regulatory environments to foster entrepreneurship, will evolve rapidly over the next five years. Countries that establish and promote internet exchange points will help to cultivate the localisation of African internet traffic, and stimulate the creation and distribution of more local content.
To take full advantage of the power of the internet, African leaders must give rise to regulatory and political environments that remove cumbersome barriers, encourage competition by opening up markets to engage more access providers, and capitalise on these positive forces that ultimately will be the dynamic impetus to propel Africa forward.
Here is an article I came across today. I played the game and it’s kind of fun, cool sound effects! I think this is a fun example of how an ordinary product can be interactive and easy to buy online.
Zippo launched an online game reminiscent of the game show “Concentration,” using lighter designs as pieces to remember. The game will be live through Dec. 16 and it’s hard to play just once. My best time was 57 seconds! Once the game is complete, players are prompted to either play again or shop for a lighter with the USMC emblem, the Rolling Stones tongue, a Playboy bunny or AC/DC logo, among others. The game is supported through banner ads and email blasts. Blattner Brunner created the campaign and handled the media buy.
As I returned to my humble abode from our Internerd meeting, I stumbled across this article in Adweek about interactive advertisments as connected to DVR.
NBC, TiVo in Stop/Watch Pact
November 27, 2007
By John Consoli
NEW YORK NBC Universal has entered into a multi-year partnership with TiVo. As part of the agreement, NBC’s owned-and-operated TV stations will subscribe to TiVo’s Stop/Watch second-by-second commercial ratings service and sell TiVo interactive Record Tags in combination with other NBC products.
The tags allow viewers to click on an icon when watching a commercial to obtain more information about that advertiser and then return to the exact place they exited. NBC will offer advertisers detailed reports on the results of information derived from viewers clicking on the tags. TiVo and NBCU will also work to develop additional ad products and will share revenue derived from those products.
NBCU will also begin using TiVo Record Tags in its on-air promotions, which will enable viewers to click to record the particular show that is being promoted.
“With proliferating media options and changing consumer behavior, our clients are asking for new ideas, better metrics and more accountability,” said Michael Pilot, president, NBCU sales and marketing. “Our partnership with TiVo is another example of NBCU’s continuing effort to improve the effectiveness of TV advertising for our clients, evolve the commercial form and expand the value of our advertising inventory.”
TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers called the agreement “a watershed moment for advertisers, broadcast and cable television and TiVo. Partnering with a TV powerhouse like NBCU to bring TiVo’s intuitive advertising solutions to a broad base of advertisers is a major step forward in the media industry’s efforts to make sure advertisers are able to adapt to the new world of DVR-based viewing.”
NBC is the first broadcast network to subscribe to TiVo’s Stop/Watch commercial ratings service.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Big Marketers Greatly Increase Cyber Monday Activities
Published: November 27, 2007
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| Videography: Steve Raddock |
| Nearly one-third of all U.S. adults shopped online on Cyber Monday this year. That’s a dramatic increase from the 17% who did the same last year.
<!– Videography: Hoag Levins –> |
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Even though the term was coined just three years ago, “Cyber Monday” has become a major concern for big marketers in the critical holiday gift-buying season. Last year, the websites of 43% of the country’s national retailers offered Cyber Monday discounts or incentive promotions. This year, 72% were making such offers in hopes of boosting holiday sales. In other news in this 3 Minute Ad Age, Unilever finds itself embroiled in controversy over its contradictory Dove and Axe ad campaigns, and Starbucks, a brand that once boasted it didn’t need to advertise, has launched its first-ever national TV ad campaign.
This is a video showing some new banners that Apple did:
Apple Banners Go Viral, Then Crash
November 21, 2007
By Brian Morrissey
Apple’s new viral sensation
NEW YORK The “Get a Mac” ads have become fixtures on YouTube, inspiring dozens of parodies of the spots starring the hipster “Mac Guy” and nerdy “PC Guy.” Now, an Apple effort touting its Leopard operating system has generated another viral hit with the most prosaic of ad forms: the banner.
Yesterday, Apple began running Flash-enabled video banners that show the Mac and PC guys in a placement on the right-hand side of the screen. While discussing the problems some users have with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, the PC Guy tries to illuminate a “Don’t Give Up On Vista” sign in the banner at the top of the page. It malfunctions, leaving the sign constantly flashing, “Give Up On Vista.”
The placement, created by Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Media Arts Lab, quickly struck a chord in the tech community, setting off something perhaps unprecedented: blog posts and message-board discussions about the banners, and even a YouTube video showing the ad in action. The video, which Apple fan site MacRumors.com uploaded, has received over 70,000 views since it was uploaded on late Tuesday, making it the 9th most viewed clip of the day.
One small problem: the ad has caused some browsers to crash and others to have audio problems, which led Engadget to pull the placement today. In a post, Engadget editor Ryan Block apologized to visitors.
Apple ran the ad on several technology blogs and sites, including CNET’s News.com, Engadget and PCWorld.com. (Placements on the latter were replaced by different executions later in the day. An agency rep said she was unaware of problems with the ads, which are scheduled to run next week on WSJ.com and CNN.com.)
Despite the technical problems, the push certainly resonated with techies. At MacRumors, a short post on the ad attracted more than 130 comments. On TechCrunch, writer Duncan Riley praised the effort—and the post drew 50 comments. It also landed on the front page of TechMeme, a popular tech aggregation site. On Digg, the story attracted nearly 2,500 “digs,” making it the leading topic on the homepage.
While many praised the ad’s creativity, some bloggers said the work, which targeted PC areas of sites, showed an increasing arrogance on Apple’s part. (Others pointed out that Apple, not Microsoft, had caused browser crashes and systems problems.)
“Microsoft should run an ad about how Apple sits around claiming everything they make is perfect and flawless, but tends to come riddled with stupid little problems,” wrote the InsideMicrosoft blog.
Pffft. Apple? Screw up? Fooey on you!
